Take your Drupal skills even further with valuable tricks for making site building truly efficient. In this concise guide—the third in a series by award-winning designer Dani Nordin—you’ll learn how to set up your own development environment, quickly update your modules, and use version control to protect yourself from bonehead mistakes.

Handle repetitive tasks with ease, avoid hours of frustration, and devote more time to pushing the envelope of Drupal design—just by picking up the basics of a few developer tools. It’s much more than simple coding; it’s real, honest-to-goodness developer Ninja Magick.

Learn basic commands and use them in Drupal on the command line

Set up your local development environment, and learn ways to collaborate on code with others

Download modules, themes, libraries, and more with Drush, the Drupal shell

Use Git, the free version control system, and create a GitHub account

Pack content types, views, and other functionality you use often into a custom module with Features

Table of Contents

Setting Up a Local Development
Environment

Chapter 1
Setting Up a Local Development Environment and Installing
Drupal

Step 1: Install MAMP

Step 2: Setting Up Your Main File Structure

Step 3: Setting Up the Drupal files

Step 4: Creating the Database

Step 5: Install Drupal

Chapter 2
Working on the Command Line: Some Basic
Commands

Commands

That Wasn’t So Bad, Was It?

Chapter 3
Installing Drush

Installing Drush

Another Option: Creating a Symbolic Link to Drush

Now the Fun Begins

Putting This in Action: Installing Modules

Chapter 4
Getting Started with Version Control

Master Versus Origin

Setting Up Git for Your Workflow

Step 1: Create an SSH Key

Step 2: Install Git

Step 3: Set Up Your Git Configuration

Step 4: Set Up a GitHub Account

Step 5: Create the Remote Repository

Step 6: Set Up the Local Repository

So What Happens on a Team?

First Things First: The Git Workflow

And There We Go

Using Features and Drush Make to Make Development Easier

Chapter 5
Using Features in Your Workflow

Still More Awesomeness Awaits

Chapter 6
Making Drupal Easier: Working with Drush Make and Installation
Profiles